This invention relates generally to printers and in particular to an apparatus for generating demonstration images for printers.
Printers for personal computers such as the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet.RTM. and DeskJet.RTM. printer lines are often sold in retail stores. Consumers who come to the retail stores to purchase a printer often desire to operate and compare the various printers on display in order to make a purchase decision. It is desirable that some means be readily available to either the customer or salesperson to demonstrate and compare the various printers by printing demonstration pages from each printer. Demonstration pages ("demo pages") are typically stored as demo images in digital memory that may reside either within the printer or external to the printer and provided via an interface port such as a parallel printer port. The demo image is provided to the printer that in turn prints a demo page.
Providing a dedicated personal computer for each printer or even for a sales aisle of printers to provide demo images is cost prohibitive. Furthermore, the complexity and time required to administrate the printing of demo pages from the various printers interferes with the sales process because the personal computer is configured to print to one printer at a time and must be reconfigured for each type of printer. The technique of using a personal computer to provide the demo pages thus suffers from poor reliability because of the constantly changing configuration of printers on the sales aisle.
Many printers are provided with an internal demonstration mode in which the demo images are stored in internal memory. The internal demonstration mode is typically initiated by a sequence of key presses on the front panel of the printer. This technique suffers from the large amount of dedicated memory typically required to digitally store demo pages, which may exceed the size of the regular memory used for normal printing operations. Because printing demo pages is seldom necessary after the computer printer has been purchased and is in normal use, the memory space that is dedicated to storing the demo images is wasted and adds unnecessarily to the printer's manufacturing cost.
Alternatively, a special demonstration memory, typically called a "demo ROM" (read only memory), could be installed inside the printer to facilitate the sales process. After the sale of the printer, the demo ROM may be re-used in another printer. However, the demo ROM cannot be updated, may be difficult to install in the printer, is easily lost, and is specific to a certain model of printer. The utility of the demo ROM in the sales process is thus limited.
A device for demonstrating printers is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,550,985, "SPECIAL PURPOSE COMPUTER FOR DEMONSTRATING PERIPHERAL DEVICES SUCH AS PRINTERS IN WHICH POWER IS WITHDRAWN FROM THE PORT CONNECTION OF THE PERIPHERAL DEVICE", issued Aug. 27, 1996, to Miller et al. and assigned to Hewlett-Packard Company. The special purpose computer provides demo images for the printer when a button on the demo control box is pressed. No external power connections are needed since the special purpose computer is adapted to draw power directly from the printer's parallel port. The special purpose computer resides in demo control box located adjacent to the printer.
While being substantially easier to install and administrate than a demo ROM, the special purpose computer taught by Miller et al. suffers from many of the same shortcomings of the demo ROM, including the difficulty in updating or customizing the demo images. As new models of printers are introduced into the marketplace, the printer manufacturer must re-design and build new special purpose computers to support the sales programs for the new models. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a printer demonstration apparatus having a download input that allows for updating demo images to accommodate new models of printers.